Listening Lists

Every month we post a thematic Listening List with 1-5 hours of podcast episodes for our PBC meetings and online discussions. We send these out by email, so be sure to subscribe. You can always find the selections here.

While food is fundamental to humanity, each person’s experience with food is different. The media covers food from a variety of angles, including cultural, health and wellness, environmental, and political. From fad diets to the latest ‘it’ food, food trends shift quickly. So, let’s take this month to highlight some of the latest food trends and talk about how we, as individuals, experience food.

Every April, the U.S. celebrates National Library Week. Podcast Brunch Club is steadily adding more library partners to is list of chapters. In honor of both of these things, we wanted to put together a listening list that pays tribute to libraries all over the world.

There are somewhere around 7,000 languages in the world, but only 23 languages account for more than half of the world’s population and nearly 2/3 of all languages are from Asia and Africa. Languages can be born, invented, change, and die. They can also unite or divide. There is some controversy about whether languages can change the way we think, but there is no doubt that language and identity are inextricably linked. This podcast listening list explores language from a variety of angles.

As we see the effects of global warming affecting our forests, our oceans and our air we also see a growing disconnect between science and society. In a Post-Truth world, citizen science projects seek to engage citizens in the scientific process by making science more accessible and show its merits. The purpose of this playlist […]

It is estimated that one billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability. Over the years, there has been some progress in recognizing the importance of accessibility and inclusion. But our governments and workplaces and communities still have much work to do to embrace and empower people with disabilities. This month’s episodes look at different types of community responses to disability (some more helpful than others) in hopes that we learn more about what we can do to increase inclusivity for all.

This month we’re doing things a bit differently than we usually do. Typically, one of our global members will choose a theme and curate a podcast playlist around that theme, usually a sampling of a few different podcasts. But, that means it’s difficult for us to do anything that is more serialized in nature, which […]

Self-driving cars, autonomous weapons, or human-like robots are products of the distant or not so distant future. However, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming our daily lives through programs such as Siri, Google search algorithms, and Twitterbots. Because of its vast scope and potential for both good and harm, AI raises numerous ethical and safety […]

The idea of the sharing economy is not new, from carpooling to sharing a sofa in a stranger’s house. However, the proliferation of the Internet has totally changed the scene. It has enabled a number of startups and internet companies to formalize sharing experiences into the world’s most profitable businesses. Listen to this month’s episodes […]